Cultural Stagnation Quotes

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable. This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is universal. The fat is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas—but sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.

I kind of feel stuck in the late-Sixties and early-Seventies.

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development, entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance.

The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, were very fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the point of civilization which they attained. But having reached that point, they were brought to a permanent halt for want of mental liberty and individuality.

The tribal system from which the Celt never freed himself entirely was the curse of the Celtic race, predooming it to ruin.

Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.

Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn't appear to notice.

Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

The fact is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas--it sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

I think there's tons of life and excitement in Paris. There are lots of old people and young people creating sexy new culture, but they're having to do it in the middle of a theme park. Paris is so dedicated to preserving its sense of itself, "we were great once upon a time," that it's hard for people who are making work right now to have to struggle in this sort of museum.

If your social consciousness seems stuck in 1975, 2014 is gonna be a rough ride.

Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.

American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me.

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.

The Church responds to antiquated social realities, and those realities remain much more current in Utah precisely because of the Church.

Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad.

It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up.

Why does every nation on earth move to change their conditions except us [Arabs]. Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression. How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?

I remember thinking the Nineties were uncool: 'I landed in the generation where nothing happens.'

Hollywood has turned into an emotional Detroit.

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

Jews are living in the past and they can't get over it.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

[Arab peoples] are stuck back thousands of years and they think they're going to get out with a TV set.